On the Market I: Bespoke Courses
This is the first installment of “On the Market,” a series in which Dan chronicles his experiences and observations as a new PhD on the academic job market. It will continue until he gets a job or...
View ArticleOn the Market I: Brown M&M’s
Dan is doing an amazing service by documenting his process (to hopefully a well-deserved and intellectually stimulating tenure-track position). So, I thought I would add a counter-point to his. The...
View ArticleOn the Market II: Digital Footprints
In the course of my usual social media browsing I came across this article in the Chronicle, which encourages (nay, demands!) that academics take control of their online presence through the creation...
View ArticleOn the Market II: You in cyberspace
One of the ramifications of the internet age is that “you” as a presence in a variety of databases may actually outlive “you” as a physically present entity. For the job hunter, this raises a quandary...
View ArticleAnti-vax “prof” ignites scandal at Queen’s U
This week the Principal and Provost of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario publicly acknowledged student complaints that an instructor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies was...
View ArticleProfessionalism 101: How never to correspond with students
Earlier today libarienne posted a link to this viral post on vitae, in which a number of (purportedly) real, actual, human professors respond to a fictional request for a grade change with all the...
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What’s In A Number (Or Letter)?
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in my last two semesters of teaching (my first classroom experience after grad school.) I avoid grading. I look upon it with dread and procrastinate as much as...
View ArticleThose who can teach, those who can’t teach in college
That’s of course an entirely unfair overgeneralisation, but I guess I have your attention now, right? I recently took part in a scientific conference on the latest research in Spanish (more about the...
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Are English-only PhDs in the Sciences a Problem?
Following the general rule of headlines-posed-as-questions, you can probably guess my answer already: probably not. That said, this recent cri du cœur (ha!) in Vitae deserves a bit more attention than...
View ArticleShould colleges and universities require students to take courses on diversity?
Here at UCLA, we faculty voted some months ago to add a “diversity” course requirement for graduation. Such a course could be taken from any number of departments on campus, as long as the course...
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Towards Better Sexual Assault Prevention Tips?
It is no secret that colleges and universities are paying more attention to sexual assault on their campuses. This school year, The Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (SaVE) Act went into effect with...
View ArticleOn the Market III: BYU doesn’t deserve my application (or yours).
The conventional wisdom when it comes to the academic job hunt is to apply for every open position, no matter what it is or where it is located. After all, the reasoning goes, beggars can’t afford to...
View ArticleGod and Dan at BYU: (Discriminatingly) On the Market III
Dan refuses to honor Brigham Young University with his application for a position because of its required policy for faculty to be hostile to non-monogamous, non-heterosexual life choices. How...
View ArticleOn the Market IV: Paying for the Privilege
There are lots of articles out there about the hardships endured by early-career scholars, particularly those trapped in the precarious employment of the adjunct system. A shiny new PhD all too often...
View ArticleFor Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective...
This article, jointly authored by a number of geographers in the US and Canada, is worth reading in full. As for the importance of slow scholarship, let me turn for a moment to my own experience:...
View ArticleOn the Market V: Diversity Statements
One of the (least) fun things about the academic job market is that every application asks for a different constellation of documents. This is especially onerous when putting together your first few...
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Our Cultural Obsession with College is Misguided and Dangerous
[Content note: youth suicide, mental illness] One chilly morning in my Junior year of high school, a boy who sat a few desks behind me in my AP Calculus class came into school early, parked his car...
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On the Market VI: Excellence in Teaching and Student Evaluations
This year’s academic job application season is drawing to a close, and, as ever, I find the compilation of the last few packets to be tinged with the kind of grim urgency that accompanies the knowledge...
View ArticleSyllabus Adjunct Clause
Hey there, Doubters! As I promised in the last edition of On the Market, here is a sample adjunct clause that can be inserted into any syllabus for courses taught by temporary faculty. Please keep in...
View ArticleFrom the Archives: Why College Probably Shouldn’t Be Free
[Note: Much of this analysis was written around the time of the 2012 Quebec Student Protests, but remains relevant given the Sanders campaign’s popular free-college-for-all platform in the ongoing US...
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